Gita sulla Neve- Snow Trip!

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At 7am on Friday morning 56 very excited (albeit bleary-eyed) international students met at Bologna bus station to drive to the Dolomites for a fun-filled weekend of snow. The journey took less than five hours and passed quickly with the help of “L’era Glaciale” (Ice Age in Italian) and Andrea (head of ESN) working his magic with the microphone.

We arrived a little after midday and due to ESN’s undying enthusiasm for “passeggiate” (walks) set out on one almost as soon as we stepped off the coach. We took sledges with us and walked along a track through a valley alongside a stream. There was so much snow and it was really beautiful. We had a few mishaps with finding the route, due to copious amounts of lovely soft fresh snow, and I found myself several times waist deep in it. We ended up taking the cable car to the top of the mountain and descending with the 3km sledge piste. My first time on a sledge: it was amazing. We went really fast and overtook everyone with lots of flurries of snow.

After that we drove to the hotel which was palatial; we had a lovely apartment with private bathroom. The dinners were amazing too, so different from what I experienced last time I went skiing, when they consisted of the hotel-next-door meal-leftovers so we ate garlic bread soup and boiled carrots for the week. This time there were three courses, and really nice ones. After dinner we went for another walk through the enchanted forest of the unicorns to a frozen lake. It was pitch darkness and we had only head torches and Elisa’s Finnish senses for snow and pine forests to guide us. But it was so atmospheric and beautiful and then we arrived in what felt like the middle of the night at a starlit clearing, which was the frozen lake, and in the distance through the mist some people were curling. (“Curling” or “playing curling”? I have no idea…). We walked around a bit until we heard a mighty thud and a crack started to appear in the ice, at which we bid a hasty retreat to begin the walk back.

On Saturday we were up early to go to the ski hire place and then hit the slopes by about 10. The first day skiing was ace, after a shakey start and falling twice on a blue slope I managed to do a black by the afternoon without falling at all. That evening we went to a little old mountain hut for a wonderful feast laid on by this mysterious old yet very elegant couple. It was really incredible. To start with were platters of hundreds of different kinds of meat, and I had one of cheese (again I was the only vegetarian!), then we had big balls of potatoey herby things although I have no idea what they were but I think Austrian as we were only a few seconds from the border. Then for desert was apfel strudel although sadly I could only manage a mouthful, but it was really delicious. Wine flowed freely throughout the meal and it turned into a party with dancing on chairs and every nationality doing a performance of a typical song or dance from their country. We had Brazilian, Spanish, Finnish, Russian… probably more. But I luckily got away without doing anything as I was the only one from the UK.

Finally, when everyone was rather inebriated and well fed and drowsy with sleep we began what was probably the highlight of the trip: The descent down the mountain back to our coach. ESN are really crazy and they really love walks, especially in the pitch darkness in deep snow down mountains at night with 56 intoxicated students, most of whom are Spanish and not wearing proper shoes. We started at about 20.30, armed with headtorches and gps and Manuel’s walkie-talkie through the forest. It really was stunning, the stars created quite a lot of light, and the narrow path wound gently down the mountain through the tall pine trees. Scary wolf and bear tracks were visible just off the path which added to the exciting spookiness. We walked for hours however, as in a group things always seem to take ages, and all the south Americans wanted to keep jumping in snow drifts as they had never seen snow before and the novelty hadn’t quite worn off. (Who am I kidding though, I still jumped in virtually every available drift myself). After what felt like about 3 hours, we discovered that we were maybe half way, but were also possibly lost. After much pouring over the gps and jumping about with our torches set to “disco mode” (flashing) with music from mobile phones we decided on a path to try, which started to lead uphill again in a disconcerting way, but which did thankfully turn out to be the right one. It wound down the road into the valley, and was extraordinarily icy, generally beside the most precipitous sides with gaping holes in the crash barrier. There had already been two hospital casualties (on the very first morning a Greek boy had broken his wrist and a Spanish dislocated their shoulder (!!!)) and I was afraid there would be more. The road then led downhill all the way, at times quite steeply, and as I felt my feet beginning to get sore in my comfy boots I really worried about the people who didn’t have proper walking shoes, I think there was even one boy who had worn his ski boots.) Eventually, thanks to Manuel and Andrea’s wonderful walkie-talkie system we managed to get ourselves back to the village. Although I never quite heard much more conversation than “Andrea, Andrea… mi senti?!” “No no, non ti sento…!” But its mean to joke as they seem to take them verrrry seriously. We walked through the little village streets lit with sparkly Christmas lights to our coach and wonderful driver. (He chain-smoked constantly and drank café corretto for breakfast and always had an extremely sour expression). I was thankful to see him however, although a part of me did want to go on walking (just not the knees and feet part) because it was so beautiful in the crisp air in a valley surrounded by majestic mountains. Needless to say it took some time for everyone else to arrive at the bus, some had to more or less carried on board 😊 Of course the Spanish and many of the Italians were still up for a party afterwards, although whether one actually happened I have no idea as I more or less passed out as soon as I touched my bed.

The next day we were up bright and early again for another full day of skiing, this time on a different mountain. Forgetting my bravery of the first day I came to a particularly steep and scary part of a red slope and promptly fell over at the sight of it, at which something inside me refused to get up and do it and I sat for a few moments debating what to do as everyone else faded into the distance. Thankfully my guardian angel appeared, (Carla, a lovely Spanish girl and snow-boarding extraordinaire) and after some kind reassuring words offered to take my skis down for me while I slid. We did that and when we got down she helped me put them back on so I could finish the slope. I felt gripped by fear for the next hour but then decided I wanted to try it again and I did. The whole time I felt like I was looking for the difficult bit in between avoiding the terrifying three-foot high toddlers zooming past and then found myself at the bottom, so I guess it wasn’t so bad after all.

The rest of the day was really lovely and in the evening we went to “Aquafun,” a water park with swimming pools, slide and sauna. I say “sauna” but in fact it was a more of a sauna complex with Turkish bath, Jacuzzi, infra-red sauna, various finnish types of sauna and other things including buckets of icey water and chutes of snow (and free herbal tea!!). It was really quite an experience, especially the having-to-be-naked part of it and the most amazing thing to do after two days full of skiing and muscle-aches. I emerged feeling reborn and then we had massive delicious pizzas in the restaurant.

That evening was our last so we went to the local pub which was very strange but also quite amazing. It was western-American themed with a sort of stable that took up half the space and dead animals hanging everywhere in addition to some of the weirdest bricabrac you ever saw.

The last day was as good as the others. We skied until about 16h and then went to the “igloo” for the insaaaanne ‘apres-ski’ party Austrian style. Basically lots of quite old men very drunk and merry, dancing to very strange german pop music. We drank vin brule (mulled wine) and bombardino (hot and creamy bright yellow kind of egg-nogg) and then made our way back to the hotel to collect our bags and embark on the journey home.

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Photos

On the frozen lake
Elisa

Comments

[david vail]

awe-someeeeeeeeeee i am so going to have to come and see you some time! my facebook is really messed atm so i'll just chat to you on here :] i just had an economics module which went ok, i think all my teachers are predicting me A's and all really want me to apply to oxbridge... but i think durham looks wayyy better. i have never been skiing before although by the looks of your pictures it seems is should! and yes, i would have jumped in every single pile of snow too! xxx